Why Did Natalie Harp Wait Over a Year to Get a Security Clearance?

Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, refused to seek security clearance for more than a year while working in the White House.

Two people familiar with the matter told MS NOW that it was unclear why Harp had failed to obtain the proper security clearance received by all staff when they began working at the White House. Maybe she was too busy writing the president gushing love letters to finish filling out her SF-86 forms?

After concerns around Trump’s seemingly obsessed personal aide mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president was forced to personally intervene, one of the people told MS NOW. In recent months, Harp filled out the forms to receive a background check and has since received her security clearance.

Harp’s missing security clearance is just one of several red flags raised by staff during Trump’s second administration that has spurred frustrations among West Wing staffers, four people told MS NOW.

Since joining the president’s posse ahead of the 2024 election, Harp has become a central gatekeeper to the president, allowing certain voices to be heard over others. Harp “plays into the less productive and more troublesome parts of his nature, putting things in front of him that aren’t vetted,” one of the four people told MS NOW.

One national security official voiced concerns that Harp’s unusually close proximity to Trump provided her access to more sensitive information than anyone else in the president’s orbit.

There had been “subtle moves,” to create space between Harp and Trump, another of the four people told MS NOW. “She is just persistent and not realizing that’s what they were trying to do,” they said.

Harp does seem persistent—she once reportedly rode in the trunk of Trump’s SUV when there weren’t enough seats for her up front.

The security clearance issue stems back to the early days ahead of Trump’s second term, when the president-elect’s team reportedly failed to submit security clearance requests for members of his second administration, in violation of the Presidential Transition Act, a federal law that coordinates and funds the transition of power from one administration to the next.

Harp’s security status is part of a broader trend of carelessness in Trump’s second administration. FBI Director Kash Patel also reportedly granted former deputy director Dan Bongino a waiver to bypass getting a key security clearance, but the deputy director was still given access to highly classified information, such as the president’s daily brief, which collates essential information from the intelligence community.

A Florida school board—known for its book bans, anti-mask mandates, and anti-LGBTQ stance—has lost its conservative majority.

The Sarasota County School Board election, which was led by a co-founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, saw two Democrat-endorsed candidates, Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry, cruise to victory. A third Democratic candidate, Jimmy Glover, will face a run-off vote in November. If he is victorious, he will be the first person of color to ever sit on the five-person Sarasota County School Board.

“I really think at the end of the day, regardless of political affiliation, our community was just tired of the culture wars, the political theater and being the center of national attention for all the wrong reasons,” Tennimon, a former teacher, said.

“I think that they realized how destructive those divisive policies really were,” Mayberry, also a retired educator, added. “What they’ve seen in the last four years, with basically the tabloid happenings on the school board and a lot of the policies and resolutions that were being made, our general community did not agree with.”

Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis have very much led the charge against “woke” in schools. In 2023, the state banned Advanced Placement Psychology in all public schools because its teachings on sexual orientation and gender identity violated the state’s draconian “Don’t Say Gay” law. The state was responsible for 40 percent of all book bans across the country in the 2022–23 school year, banning 1,406 books like The Kite Runner, Little Rock Nine, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In the last year, the Sarasota School Board specifically removed race, sexuality, and disability from its anti-bullying rules and declared its loyalty to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Maybe people seem to be getting anti-woke fatigue at both the state and local level. But Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich doesn’t seem to think so.

“Every couple of years someone in the media writes our obituary, and every couple of years parents show up and prove them wrong,” Descovich told The Washington Post. “School boards are ground zero in the fight for parental rights, and last night Florida parents made that clear.”

Regardless, it’s clear that anti-wokeness isn’t a winning message anymore in Sarasota County, or even Florida at large—as Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, also recently won the Democratic nomination for Senate.

A Missouri judge has allowed Republicans in the state to gerrymander their congressional map in time for November’s elections.

Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled Wednesday that the state could use the new map backed by President Trump without a statewide voter referendum. It’s a big boost to Republican efforts to hold on to the House, although the ruling will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri.

The new districts were already used in the state’s congressional primaries earlier this month and on the same day, Missouri Secretary of State Deny Hoskins, a Republican, rejected a petition to put the map on the ballot this November, claiming such a move violated the Missouri Constitution.

Green agreed with Hoskins Wednesday, writing in his ruling that “The Missouri Constitution does not supply any statement—let alone a clear one—reallocating authority over congressional redistricting away from the General Assembly to a referendum process.”

Opponents in the state are already appealing.

“Everyone knows that Cole County is not the final decision here,” said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians and one of the people who sued to put the map to a vote. “After months of delay, we are pleased to be moving forward to the Missouri Supreme Court to enforce our constitutional rights.”

The new map seeks to get rid of Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, one of Missouri’s two Democrats in Congress. Under the new map, the city would be chopped up and absorbed into two nearby Republican districts, and Republicans hope this would increase their House delegation from six to seven members of Congress.

Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to hastily redraw congressional maps across the country in order to prevent losing the House. They’ve taken advantage of a Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act and removing legal provisions for majority-Black districts. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to overcome the president’s record-low unpopularity.

The upcoming Freedom 250 Grand Prix is making the National Mall look more like a sideshow.

Photos of the preparation for the Indycar race this weekend show grandstands, finish lines, and signage all around the area in the nation’s capital.

It’s unusual to see corporate signage and bleachers near the Capitol building, but that’s how President Trump wants to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The roads around the Mall are normally devoted to cars and tour buses at this time of year as tourists visit its national landmarks, museums, and monuments. But the streets look eerily empty except for construction workers, vehicles, and the barriers that will turn the area into a racetrack.

The Mall has been through a lot in Trump’s second term, from the heavily botched renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to that sparsely attended flop known as the Great American State Fair. He damaged the grass with his Independence Day celebrations and blamed nonexistent vandals for it when it was his own fault, just like with the pool disaster.

Now, the capital of the United States of America is about to see its first ever auto race. Under any other president, this might be considered cool, but now, the public is wondering not only how he’ll mess it up, but the damage he could cause to important national landmarks.

Air Force Major Jason Watson—who was arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building last month while calling for President Trump’s impeachment—has been arrested again.

Watson was detained on Tuesday, just one day after an exclusive CNN interview in which he said the president was “violating the Constitution, breaking the law, [and] engaged in rampant corruption.” Watson is currently in pretrial confinement in Maryland based on “allegations of continued misconduct” according to the Air Force. It did not identify the specific misconduct allegations, although his attorney believes that his recent CNN appearance is to blame.

“What is happening with President Trump is not normal. He has failed us,” Watson told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “And not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”

Watson’s July arrest came during a news conference with the Removal Coalition in which he called for Trump and Vice President JD Vance to be “impeached, convicted, and removed,” over their feckless leadership in the war on Iran. He was arrested and escorted off the premises while in full uniform and holding an “Impeach. Convict. Remove” sign. He was placed under a gag order and could still be court-martialed or removed from the Air Force.

Watson is an active duty service member who is placing his 17-year Air Force career on the line for exercising his First Amendment right—and his lawyers think he’s very well become a target for it.

“Nothing that is worth doing is something that you can do for free. Everything that is worthwhile is going to cost something. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to require sacrifice,” Watson told Burnett. “So all that I could do was ask myself: ‘What’s the highest price that I’m willing to pay?’ And this is what I ultimately came up with.”